I am wrong.

: : : : : : : "Snowing down south" - I understand this to be a polite way of saying "you are showing your petticoat below your skirt". Does anyone know the origin?

: : : : : : Petticoat? If so, it's probably a pretty old phrase. I'm no expert on women's undergarments, but I think that for quite a number of years the word slip has been used more commonly than petticoat. What's the difference? Depends on who's been doing the defining. The word slip came into use in the 18th century, first applied to a garment with sleeves. One dictionary records the slip as being a dress-length undergarment suspended from narrow shoulder straps--as I have always been led to believe. The OED, however, says that in the 20th century the word slip was applied to an underskirt (sc., by implication, rather than the full-length garment). In the U.S. I'm pretty sure that women would have described this garment as a half-slip, although "you're slip is showing" still applied. But since a slip was women's underwear, ergo unmentionable (during a certain past era), "snowing down south" was a genteel way around mentioning the unmentionable. Comments, anyone? SS

: : : : : SS, I've long wondered what the OED means by "sc."

: : : : : Yes, "slip" is what we call the garment now, and one that hangs from the waist is a half-slip.

: : : : : "It's snowing down south" is listed in Eric Partridge's "Dictionary of Catch
Phrases American and British." Partridge says it's Australian, current during the late 1940s and the 1950s "but rapidly less since then," and it may have reached Australia from the U.S. It was known in the U.S. as early as the 1930s, Partridge says.

: : : : No, I don't know the origin and can't find any references to it in any of the books I have about Australian sayings. In fact the only reference I can find at all is to the writer Judith Clark who included it in "Kalpana's Dream" as a "phrase my grandmother used to use". By the way a "slip" in Australia is an undergarment that includes a bodice and a skirt - I've never heard anyone use the expression "half-slip" to mean an underskirt, and would have thought that a half-slip was the bodice or top-half of a slip. Mind you, it's very hot in the part of Autralia where I live, so slips of any description would only be "special occasion" garments and so don't come up in conversation very often. Certainly, if I saw someone with an underskirt hanging out of the bottom of their skirt I would be more likely to say "aren't you hot in that?" rather than "Your slip is showing". In this post-Madonna world, I can't imagine anyone would actually care that much. Pamela

: : : Regarding sc., viz., vide,and lege. The dictionaries that I have consulted don't even list "lege," which I've seen used from time to time. Sc., of course, stands for L@tin scilicet = scire licet 'it is permitted to know'. Meaning (acc. to the OED) To wit; that is to say; namely. Abbreviated scil. or sc.
: : : Viz., of course, = L@tin videlicet (it is permitted to see), which the OED defines nearly the same way as scilicet. (I use them differently, but what do I know?)
: : : V. = Vide, see (look up elsewhere under the same spelling), or q.v., quid vide, pretty much the same (look it up).

: : : As to female undergarments, regarding which I, like Sergeant Schultz, "know nothing, nothing!" the nearest thing to the bodice of a slip worn separately would be, I think, a camisole, or one variety of it. Like some other undergarments, the camisole has been much subject to stylish variation, some intended to adapt it to use as outerwear. The euphemistic phrase, "it's snowing down south," doubtless went out of fashion because the word slip ceased to be regarded as naughty. However, I believe the euphemizing went on longer than is implied in some sources, especially in Catholic girls' schools. Or I could be wrong
. As for Australia's hot climate: since the reason to wear a slip rarely has anything to do with warmth and more to do with the type of material worn over it, Australian girls and women have probably made the slip supererogatory by the choice of material for their outerwear.
: : : SS

: : Pamela: "Half-slip" is standard in the U.S. for an underskirt. Smokey is correct that an upper undergarment consisting of bodice and shoulder straps is called a camisole.

: : Smokey: All your "of course"s presume familiarity with more L4t|n than many of us have. I'd figured out that the OED's "sc." meant something close to "i.e.," but ordinary writers in English don't use "sc." Evidently, only dictionary writers do. ~rb

: Of course. I had to try to figure out which sounded least presumptuous, and I guessed wrong. If abbreviations like "sc." and "viz." were old hat to the readers of my post, I didn't want to seem to lecture them. At the same time, I wished to make sure I wasn't being too obscure for any readers NOT familiar with the abbreviations. I don't think it panned out too well. Apologies to anyone I may have offended. SS

It's fashionable here among "ferals" to wear tie-dyed slips as outer wear. I asked various people what the various versions of these were called. Seems I was wrong: as previous posts have said a camisole ("cami") is the top bit and half-slip is the bottom bit (although nobody used the word half-slip - underskirt is the common word). In an attempt to prove the rest of the world wrong and myself right, I checked ebay for listings of these garments. I was still wrong. So, Sergeant Schultz, your knowledge of such things is deeper than you care to admit. My apologies. By the way, Smokey, I wasn't suggesting that women wear underskirts for warmth - I meant women here generally tend to avoid the additional heat load that a (usually synthetic) slip causes. It's just too hot and too humid. So, you're right, skirts made of a sheer fabric are often avoided for day-to-day wear if modesty is an issue. And thanks for the abbreviation information - I was among the totally ignorant. Pamela